There are various types of switching architectures in optical communications. Switching the signals in optical domain may provide cost savings. However, optical switching often lacks required versatility in controlling flows of information. To provide a greater versatility, one may rely on some level of optical to electrical conversion and electrical to optical conversion. Such processing can cause a delay or latency to the signal being processed. In addition, as the scale of the number of signals being routed increases, an interconnecting network becomes more complicated, more expensive, and requires more power to implement.
Alternative optical switching architectures, which strike a balance between cost and performance, are therefore desirable.